Adaptive Handover Decision Using Fuzzy Logic for 5G Ultra-Dense Networks

With the explosive increase in traffic volume in fifth-generation (5G) mobile wireless networks, an ultra-dense network (UDN) architecture, composed of highly concentrated millimeter-wave base stations within the fourth-generation (4G) system, has been developed. User equipment (UE) may encounter more frequent handover opportunities when moving in a UDN. Conventional handover schemes are too simple to adapt to the diverse handover scenarios encountered in 5G UDNs because they consider only UE signal strength. Unnecessary handovers aggravate the ping-pong effect and degrade the quality of service of cellular networks. Fuzzy logic (FL) is considered the best technique to unravel the handover problem in a high-density scenario of small cells for 4G/5G networks. In this paper, we propose an FL-based handover scheme to dynamically adjust the values of two handover parameters, namely handover margin (HOM) and time to trigger (TTT), with respect to each UE. The proposed scheme, abbreviated as FLDHDT, has dynamic adjustment of TTT in addition to HOM by using the signal to interference plus noise ratio and horizontal moving speed of the UE as inputs to the FL controller. To demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of FLDHDT, we perform simulations using the well-known ns-3 simulator. The performance measures include the number of handovers, overall system throughput, and ping-pong ratio. The simulation results demonstrate that FLDHDT improves the handover performance of 5G UDNs in terms of the number of handovers, ping-pong ratio, and overall system throughput compared to a conventional handover scheme, namely Event A3, and an FL-based handover scheme with dynamic adjustment of only HOM.